Unable to reach Phelps, Butler would have called whoever he was supposed to contact if something went wrong. He might have been told to remain in place and attempt to find out what the problem was. Check the hospital. Check the local news for reports of arrests, accidents and deaths. Try to find out, discreetly, if Phelps had made the scheduled pick up at the distillery. Butler had also made a few calls to another number, an untagged phone, and Shay had added a note identifying it as the number of Jeanie Shaw, Iain’s little sister.
“Jeanie?” I asked.
“Yeah, I checked out Butler’s social media too. Those two had been living together for over six years.” Which made him part of the family, even if they hadn’t made it official by getting married. “I guess he renamed the boat after her too, huh?”
If Butler had done any online browsing since then, he hadn’t used the phone to do it with.
And Phelps? From the look of things, he and Jordan had made the decision to deal with Sean Osborne themselves and to cut all contact with Locke’s people, taking a fat, parting bonus with them. Apart from Phelps’ desire to deal with Osborne personally, his mere presence there would have made them both feel extremely nervous. If the whole operation was under investigation, then it must have seemed like a very good time to clear the hell out. Jordan had travelled down to Skye on Saturday on the Kværnen, and Phelps must have followed on a ferry.
Whether they’d stashed the packages from the whisky crates somewhere on Lewis and Harris or Jordan had carried them to Skye with him on Kværnen, I didn’t know. Nor could I fill in their movements and activities between Saturday and Wednesday. Damien Price had booked his ferry tickets on Saturday night, and if Shay was right and Phelps had cloned Damien’s phone, Phelps would have known about it the next time he checked for activity. We hadn’t released the phone yet, so we could turn it on and find out easily enough. His car was still here too, but Vanessa could arrange for someone to pick that up when she was ready. Trish would keep it safe for her until then.
“Angelo Barclay travelled from Tarbert down to Uig on the Sunday afternoon ferry as a foot passenger,” Shay confirmed when I asked. “I checked the bookings.”
That reminded me that I’d meant to contact CalMac to ask for a history of tickets purchased under that name. I’d need legitimately obtained documentation of those dates for my case file. I stopped what I was doing to send off an email request to them before turning my attention to the messages on Barclay’s phone. He’d sent off one each evening, starting on Saturday, and they were all vague variants on the theme of unsuccessfully trying to find out where his ‘friend’ was. He had not been sent any replies. Whatever instructions he’d received about how long he should stay here and where he should go when he left must all have been given during Friday’s call. That was disappointing; I’d been hoping to find something more helpful.
“Ready to head down to the marina?” I asked my cousin. I’d already seen the bulging kit bag he’d got ready sitting under the spare desk.
“Just about.” He checked his satellite feed. “We don’t need to move quite yet. Maybe you should go and ask Ewan to come and help carry things? I don’t like to think of how much stuff we might have to take off the boat.”
Down at the marina, Shay conferred briefly with the two coastguard lads who’d brought Jeanie in, finding out exactly what they had touched while they’d been aboard. They’d been careful. We might not be able to lift any useful prints from the helm, controls or door handles, but apart from that, it was looking good.
We decided to start with the two lower deck cabins, which were short on both headroom and space. You could sit up on any of the beds in those, but even we had to duck to get into either of them, and I was only five foot ten, topping my cousin by an inch. The main stateroom smelled awful. The double bed platform in there was covered by a set of rumpled, sweat-stained bedding, and somebody had definitely pissed themselves in there sometime recently. The other little cabin had been set up with twin beds, and it looked as if both of them had been slept in.
Shay got to work quickly. After taking his first set of photos, he stripped all the pillowcases and sheets from both cabins, carefully bagging and labelling each item.
“We’ve got a good chance of skin, hair and saliva samples from those, as well as chemical traces.” He checked for prints, spraying, dusting, photographing and lifting methodically. “Pull up Cory Phelps’ prints from the van on your phone, will you?”
I did, and we compared them with the new images on Shay’s. There was no doubt about it. Cory Phelps had been on this boat. We also had a match for a set of unidentified prints from the van, too, probably Jordan’s. I think we were both seeing the same picture of what must have transpired. It would have been easy enough for Jordan and Phelps to hop on a bus up here from Tarbert after abandoning the van on Wednesday afternoon, before anyone was actively looking for them.
“They must have given Butler something to keep him unconscious while they were here,” I said, voicing aloud what we were both thinking. They’d have needed to keep him quiet, so as not to attract any attention from nearby boats or anyone passing by. From the state of the main cabin, it wasn’t unreasonable to conclude that someone had been left in there for a lengthy period. In fact, I now doubted that it had been Butler who’d sent those last two messages off.
We moved our focus to the little head, with its pull out shower and seawater toilet, and Shay snapped some more shots before bagging up a few more samples. That done, we moved back up to the deck cabin. There, he opened up the privacy curtains to let some daylight in, and I packed our samples from below into one of the spare holdalls he’d brought along while he began on the cupboards in the little galley area.
“We might as well just take everything that’s been opened,” he decided. “It would be a waste of time to take samples from all of this.”
Shay had been right to suggest bringing Ewan along. By the time he’d gone through half of the food and drink supplies, I’d already gone out to hand Ewan the first full bags to take back to the station. The rubbish bin took a little longer to deal with. Shay spread its contents out on a plastic sheet before bagging up the empty bottles, packets and wrappers individually. I noticed him adding an extra mark with a highlighter to prioritise the items he thought most likely to yield results. Shay’s methodical search soon cleared the galley area, including the little fridge, of anything worth testing. He even bagged up the dirty mugs and other unwashed items that were there.
My cousin eventually uncovered Butler’s phone near the bottom of one of the under seat storage lockers, buried in a heap of spare bedding, silenced but still half charged. Shay switched out the full memory card on his phone and snapped a couple of shots before bagging that too.
I imagined Butler waking up groggily to find himself alone on board. He must have thought Phelps and Jordan had taken his phone and trashed and dumped it somewhere. Leaving it here, turned on, had been a far smarter move. If any of Locke’s people were tracking it, that would keep their attention nicely focused on the boat without raising suspicions.
After coming round, Butler must have decided to get the hell out of here while he had the chance. I imagined he’d probably been the one to empty a couple of those empty, priority tagged water bottles from the bin too. How long after they’d left had Butler regained consciousness and, more importantly, where the hell had they gone?
“According to the equipment inventory, there should be an RIB and an outboard engine for it in the afterdeck locker.” Shay had found the inventory in a cupboard with the first aid kit earlier in his search. “We’d better check that it’s still there.”
It wasn’t. The rigid inflatable dinghy was gone. Which meant that Jordan and Phelps now had a small boat, and if they’d left during the night, they could be anywhere by now. In calm weather like this, they could easily have rowed out of the harbour before starting the engine and crossed to the mainland during the night; or coasted down to North Uist or acro
ss to Skye. Some of those RIBs were much faster than Jeanie herself was.
I carried the rest of our sample bags to the pontoon dock while Shay sealed the side and aft side cabin doors. On the dock again himself, he strung more tape across the stern before pulling his gloves off.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed, vigorously shaking his hands in the breeze before tucking the detested gloves into a side pocket on his kit bag. “Well, I guess that’s that then, Cuz. You’ll just have to wait until somebody spots them and they get picked up before you can close this one down. Still, that at least gives the lab boys and your pathologist chappie plenty of time to get their reports in.”
Yeah, whether we were now looking at a double murder or a murder and an involuntary manslaughter, there was nothing more left for Shay and me to do here once he’d packed all these samples up and shipped them off. Our suspects were in the wind now, and it could be days, weeks or even months before they were taken into custody. Hell, there was even a slim chance they might have run into trouble out on the water and both drowned for all we knew.
Ewan had been back and waiting for a while, so we split the bags between us all and started to walk back up to the station. “Evening flight for this batch again, Mr Keane?” he asked. He must have heard all the last part of our conversation.
Shay shook his head. “They can go tomorrow. By the time I’ve printed everything off and got them packed up properly, it’d probably be too late to get them on board the plane in time to fly out tonight, anyway. Besides, it’s Friday night, Ewan. I’m sure you have better things to do than hang around working late again. You’re off duty this weekend, aren’t you?”
“Aye, I am, barring emergencies. Actually, a bunch of us are meeting up down at McNeill’s tonight for a drink, and some live music. You’d both be very welcome.” I doubted Shay would want to go, but that actually sounded rather tempting.
“I might just take you up on that offer,” I told him. “I think the least I can do is buy you a drink after all your help, Ewan.”
I left my cousin to get on with packing up his samples and went to tell Trish the bad news. She took it with a shrug and a wry little smile.
“No need to look so glum, Conall. You’ve basically wrapped the whole case up in two days, and I don’t see how anybody could reasonably have expected any further miracles after that. I’m sure Chief Anderson will agree with me.” She shook her head. “To be honest, I’m a little taken aback by how quickly you and your cousin cracked this one. I’ve never seen anything like it.” It was nice of her to say so, but I still didn’t feel very happy about Jordan and Phelps managing to slip through our fingers like that. “I’ll get the general alert sent out immediately. Go and enjoy an evening off. You’ve done your part. There’s a good chance they’ll turn up soon enough.”
Downstairs again, I composed another email to Anderson, and sure enough, my mobile rang a few minutes later.
“What can’t be helped, can’t be helped, Conall,” he reassured me. “It’s not as if you could have searched every boat on the island in time to stop them anyway, even if that had been possible to arrange.” At least he didn’t sound disappointed. “Maybe we should see about arranging a little squadron of drones for your cousin to play with for next time?”
He might have been joking, but I could just imagine how much fun Shay would have playing with a new toy like that. And if he’d had thermal imaging drones out patrolling the harbour last night, I was certain he’d have programmed the things to alert him to something as suspicious as Phelps and Jordan sneaking off in that dinghy. I liked that ‘next time’ too. If Anderson thought we’d let him down, he wouldn’t have said that. Would he?
“That could be very useful, Sir,” I told him, and he just chuckled.
“Aye, if the Watchdog people didn’t get up in arms about it every time they suspected we were ‘misusing’ the things... and if I had the budget for it. No, I’m afraid he’ll just have to make do with the resources he already has for the foreseeable future.”
Well, I was pretty sure Shay could arrange some little nano drones for himself if he thought they were worth having. They’d be a lot quieter and harder to spot than the standard police drones, anyway. It was certainly worth thinking about.
“When would you like to fly back?” Anderson asked. “I can book you onto the one forty-five tomorrow?”
“That would be fine, Sir,” I agreed. I knew Shay was itching to get back to check on the house, and if I did decide to have a few drinks tonight and let off some steam, at least I wouldn’t need to be up early.
By the time I’d finished with Anderson, our printer was busily churning out pages of colour photographs. I estimated Shay might still need another ten minutes to finish organising everything, and it was going up to seven by then, anyway. Unless something unusual was going on back in Inverness, Caitlin should have finished work ages ago. I sent off a text to let her know we were all done here and would be heading back tomorrow. Her reply made me smile.
‘What took you so long? We’ve closed three cases down while you’ve been lazing around.’
I couldn’t resist having a look at what my team had been up to after that. They’d rounded up the kids who trashed the Porsche, let a couple of drunken brawlers off with cautions and caught one of the pickpockets who’d been working the town centre lately. Not bad.
I helped Shay repack everything with the right folder of accompanying papers and thumb drive in each bag, making sure that we’d arranged everything carefully enough to prevent any breakages. We put the desks back how we’d originally found them before grabbing our things, and this time, I left the office door open and the key in the lock. Trish would make sure someone ran our samples out to the airport in the morning.
“I think I will head down to McNeill’s for a bit,” I told Shay as we walked along to our hotel. “Want to come along?”
He pulled a face. “To a noisy little pub full of tipsy gawkers and off-duty cops? No thanks. A shower and a nice meal in will do me just fine.” I’d have been extremely surprised if he’d said yes. Shay didn’t enjoy being in packed out small spaces much, especially if nearly everyone in them was a stranger to him.
As we walked into our hotel, a young man sprang up from the chair in the lobby where he’d been waiting for us. It was Alejandro, the athletic Spanish student from the Kværnen.
“Mr Keane!” He hurried over and thrust an envelope at Shay, “For you, please.”
Shay took it from him and removed a creamy, gilt-edged correspondence card. Good grief! It even had an embossed monogram on it.
“Nice calligraphy. What does it say?” Mads Nielsen had written it, however stylishly, in Danish.
“Herre Nielsen requests the pleasure of my company for cocktails and dinner at eight.” Shay frowned at the card. “I thought he’d given up on that whole recruiting idea.” I was damned sure he had.
“Still,” my cousin allowed thoughtfully, “it might be interesting. I wouldn’t mind having a look around that boat of his either. A round-the-clock engineering team? I wonder what sort of equipment she’s carrying. They’ll be mapping the seafloor wherever they go, of course.”
Would they? The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Seeing my expression, Shay just shook his head at me sadly.
“Oh, come on, Con, the dad’s a shipping magnate. He’d want his own boat to do at least that much. All their vessels will be uploading constant updates on shifting sand bars and undersea disturbances... but I am curious what else they might be up to. Denmark has some exciting plans in the works for more offshore wind farms in the North Atlantic.” His enthusiasm and curiosity seemed to be growing rapidly. “I wonder if Nielsen International is getting in on that? The Danes are talking about building some big artificial islands out there and producing biofuel for the shipping too. Did you know Denmark plan to end all their oil production by 2050?”
No, I hadn’t known any of that, but I wasn’t surprised that he did. Most of my cousin’s investments w
ere in renewable energy companies.
Well, Shay could certainly look after himself. Besides, however keen Mads Nielsen might be to see if he could get my cousin into bed with him, I was sure the man had too much class to do anything crass. After all, as Shay himself had pointed out, it wasn’t as if Nielsen didn’t have plenty of available options on tap. I didn’t think he had any chance of succeeding either. It looked to me like Shay was planning to spend the whole evening peppering him with questions and checking out the tech. Sex, as usual, would be the last thing on his mind. Besides, on the rare occasions that Shay did choose to indulge in that kind of exercise, it was nearly always with a girl. The vast majority of people were ‘barking up the wrong tree’ with him, as far as he was concerned.
If he wasn’t interested, he wasn’t interested.
Alejandro was waiting expectantly, so Shay pulled out a pen and scribbled something on the back of the card before handing it back and gabbling off a mouthful of rapid Spanish. Alejandro grinned, replied and scurried off hurriedly.
“Let’s see how well Herre Nielsen does at providing a decent vegetarian meal on such short notice.” Shay smirked as we headed upstairs. “Still, I could always raid his stores and mix myself up something if it’s a total disaster.”
“He might just order something in for you.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” he said confidently. “I could order my own plebby take out if I wanted one. Besides, that’s not a classy enough move for his type.”
Either way, it looked as if we both had plans for the evening after all.
Nineteen
I popped in on Shay before leaving. He’d already showered but hadn’t got around to dressing yet and was lounging damply at the desk in a hotel bathrobe. Unlike him, I still had to grab something to eat before going to McNeill’s, but even so, I thought he was pushing it a bit.
Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller Page 17
